The
hull has been breached! Intruders have made their way on to your ship! Their
goal: Total Destruction! More than 20 bombs have been detected onboard, and the
countdown has begun. Your elite Bomb Defusal Team (BDT) has been called upon to
neutralize the threat.

Does
your group have what it takes to work through the intricacies of the bombs and
defuse them in time? You’d better get moving, because this game will
self-destruct in 10 minutes...

Fuse
is a 1-5 player cooperative dice game where you use
the five colors of dice numbered 1-6 to defuse bombs. Each bomb card has a
different method to deactivate it, and you must use strategy and efficiency to
defuse all the required bombs in 10 minutes to win, score high, and ensure
the intruders don’t take over your ship.

SETUP

There isn’t much
to set up. In a few minutes, after you decide what difficulty you wish to play,
you’ll have the cards laid out and the bomb deck shuffled (this includes the
Fuse cards). The manual instructs you to lay out the bomb card pool in a line,
but if you’re playing solo, I recommend having the five face-up bomb cards in
whatever configuration you feel will allow you to transfer them from that area
to your area in front of you. Of course, this also depends on the table space you have.

Typical Setup

The only other
thing you have to do is set up a timer. There is a Fuse app you can download (iOS/Android) to countdown from 10
minutes, but any timer will do: your phone, a computer app, or an online
countdown.

GAMEPLAY

Once you start
your timer, Fuse consists of grabbing
dice from the bag, rolling the dice, and matching them to your current bomb
defusing area. The cards have difficulties 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, with 1 being the
easiest to complete. Each card contains ways to defuse it which involve either
a number from a die or the color of the die or sometimes both. Straightforward
cards have you matching exactly what’s required in any order. Other cards have
you stack dice in a pyramid where the bottom row must be finished to add dice. And many cards force you to complete
a stack of dice in a particular order as indicate by a rightward facing arrow.
Yes, there is some math on the occasional card, but don’t be frightened: it’s
not Trigonometry.

Game in progress

You have 10
minutes defuse as many bombs as you can. You'll be rolling, keeping an eye on what
you need to complete a card, pulling from the bomb deck, and strategically
snatching a card whose difficulty fits in when how you're progressing. Sometimes
you’ll be doing all four at once! The bomb deck will also have 6 fuse cards,
which tell you to remove from a bomb card a die with a specific number or
color. These fuse cards can either help you or hurt you. They can hurt you if
you are close to finishing a bomb card and you have to remove a die; they can
help you if you’re struggling to finish a bomb card and you’re not getting the
dice you need – you can start over. You win Fuse
when you have no more cards in the main bomb pool (you can have the cards in
front of you - at the end of the game, these cards are duds.)

SOLO PLAY

This is one of
my favorite solo games, and I actually prefer it solo rather than multiplayer.
It’s fast, frantic, and I can make it as hard or easy as I want it to be. Since
the bomb cards are shuffled, each game is different and challenging, no matter
what difficulty mode or variant you chose (there are a few variants listed in
the manual). I can get in quite a few games in a short amount of time, even
with setup and transition time. While the box is a little larger than it needs
to be for transport, you can fit everything into the dice bag to throw
in a suitcase, backpack, or other case.

Difficulty 3 Card

Various Fuse cards

FINAL THOUGHTS

This inexpensive
cooperative game, I feel, is essential for the solo gamer. There’s a great
balance of randomness (shuffling the deck, dealing out the bomb cards) and
strategy (deciding where to play what dice) to keep you coming back to this
game. Solo play with Fuse is about
beating your highest score, but there are so many ways to achieve that that
this game doesn’t get boring. Sometimes I’ll play 10-15 games in a row before I
realize I need to stop.